Description

Picture disc with lyric insert. Limited 250 copies

Sindrome is a case study in misfortune. Heralded as Chicago’s best thrash band ever, the band were wildly popular, and with good reason, as they were highly skilled musicians who played tight, aggressive thrash. Apparently they rejected smaller label offers in hopes of securing a major label deal, a deal that never came. Thus, they never progressed beyond the demo stage. Two demos were released: Into The Halls Of Extermination in 1987 and Vault Of Inner Conscience in 1991. Both demos were re-released in 2002 on two extremely rare picture discs by Dust records Usa in a limited run of only 250 copies of each. A shame that this band never realized its potential.

Into The Halls Of Extermination was the bands first demo and it features Troy Dixler (from Devastation) on vocals, Shaun Glass (from Broken Hope) on bass, Tony Ochoa (from Jungle Rot) on drums, Chris Mittleburn (from Master, Death Strike) on guitar and Erv Brautigam (from Devastation) on gutar. This first demo contains five tracks of relentless, brutal thrash metal that, thanks to the deep vocals, can be labelled also as death/thrash metal. By the way, the riffage, the drumming are thrash metal based and even if the vocals are quite deep for the period, its difficult to call this exactly death/thrash metal. Anyway, the violence is always high and the influences come from bands like Dark Angel and Slayer. The palm muting riffs are pure, fast and essential while the drumming is a bit hidden during the singing parts because the production is not the best. The speed is almost always high and the title track or the following Rapture in Blood manage to be also truly dark and evil thanks to several distortions and frightening vocals. The guitars solos are simply on tremolo picking, so fast as hell and massive in their brutality. The snare drum sound is the part you can hear best because the other parts and toms on the drum kit are too low in volumes. Precognition is dark and slow by the beginning to restart on speed. The vocals are really vicious and fast here and the following Cathedral of Ice features a better bass drum work and a return of the dark atmospheres. The last Aortic Expulsion is a return to speed and its perfect to close this little but worthy demo. The guitars lines are always quite various even if they are not astounding and everything is good. This is not a masterpiece but a sincere piece of thrash metal and my advice is to get it if you can find it, it will catch you.

Track listing:
1. Into The Halls Of Extermination
2. Rapture In Blood
3. Precognition
4. Cathedral Of Ice
5. Aortic Expulsion